General Tips for Writing Nominations

• Write two to five paragraphs to answer each question on the nomination form.  Provide enough detail that the committee gets a sense of specifics.
• Be specific. Cite specific actions and accomplishments, and be sure to connect those things clearly to the criteria of the award.  Review the rubric for the award (see below) so you can highlight things the committee will be looking for.
• Remember that committee members do not necessarily work in your area.  You may need to include enough context to help the committee understand the impact of actions in your area or on the campus as a whole.
• Unless expressly stated otherwise, letters of support are not required, but they are always welcome, and can often be a big help to the committee in understanding the impact of someone’s work. 
• Write out your nomination in a word processing document beforehand-the form times out after a period of inactivity, so if you take too long, you could lose your data!
• If you are nominating for an award that requires letters of support check the nomination system regularly to see which letters have been completed/submitted. In the past, the awards committee has tried to help nominators keep up with this, but the system itself now makes it possible for nominators to monitor whether nominations are complete.

For the achievement award, two letters of support from someone other than the nominator are required.  Letters are submitted through the nomination system, you'll provide email addresses of folks to invite to support the nomination as part of the nomination process.

If you have questions about the nomination process, you can reach out to the current AP awards committee chair, Shannon Dale ([email protected])

 

Achievement Award

To see specific criteria for the Achievement Award, click on "About this Award" link when submitting the award, or go to the About the Award Page.

Award Rubrics

The Awards sub-committee scores nominees on a number of criteria in each category, and generates an overall score for each nominee.  Highlighting things in your nomination that correspond to a category on the rubric will help your nominee score better.  The criteria for each award are explained below.

Commitment to Diversity

Action:  Does the nomination note specific actions this candidate has taken to improve campus climate or further diversity initiatives?  Does it note specific ways in which the candidate has modeled concern for diversity for others?  Nominations that explain specific actions and connect those actions explicitly to diversity and inclusion will score highly in this category.

Scope of job: Some employees have advancing diversity hard-coded into their job descriptions.  Those folks would need to do more to distinguish themselves in this area than employees who have little or no responsibility for advancing those initiatives.  Did the nominee go “above and beyond” their job description to advance or model diversity?  Those that do will score higher in this category.

Understanding:  What specific things does the nomination point to that demonstrate knowledge/understanding of diversity? Do they actively educate others in their area, or in other areas of the university, about diversity issues?  Employees who actively pursue education, or help others educate themselves, will score high in this category.

Overall Impression:  How well, overall, does this nominee seem to fit the criteria for the award?

Commitment to Students Award

Student Nomination and support:  Since this is an award for providing support to and for students, it’s important to see student voices represented in the nominations for this award. The more letters of support from students present in the nomination, the higher the candidate will score.

Mentorship:  How does the candidate mentor others?  Does that mentorship go above and beyond the requirements of their job?  Specific instances of mentorship and the impact of that mentorship will get a higher score in this category.

Influence:  Does the candidate seem to have an impact on student success?  How?  How much of an impact have they had?  Specific instances of how the employee has impacted student’s academic success will garner a high score in this category.

Overall Impression:  How well, overall, does this nominee seem to fit the criteria for the award?

Innovation

Innovative Practice or Procedure:  In order to qualify for this award, the candidate will have to have developed at least one innovative procedure or practice the nominator can point to.  The more of these efforts the nomination cites, and the more distinctly innovative they seem to be, the higher they will score in this category.

Impact:  How much of an impact on the university has the process or procedure had?  The more people/units affected, the higher the score in this category.

Determination:  How much work was it to develop and implement the process or procedure?  How many obstacles did the nominee have to overcome?  Work that required significant effort to implement scores higher in this category.

Overall impression:  How well, overall, does this nominee seem to fit the criteria for the award?

Outstanding Team Project:

Representation:  How representative was the team?  The more units/divisions the work involved, the higher it scores in this category.  The nominee also scores higher if the work involves two or more units in different divisions or campus locations. 

Collaboration: How much work did this project require, and was the work evenly distributed across the units involved?  Also, how much impact did the work seem to have on the units involved?  Projects which involved considerable work that crossed unit lines, and had a significant impact on the processes or procedures of more than one unit, or the university as a whole, will score highly in this category.

Scope and Goals:  Are the scope and goals of the project clear in the nomination?  Were those goals met?  How well and to what degree were they met?  Nominations in which the scope of work are clearly laid out, and in which most or all of the goals of the project were met will score highly in this category.

Benefit to University: Is there a clear indication of how the work of the team benefitted the university?  How much of the university benefitted?  Nominees whose work had a clear impact will score higher, and the number of people affected by the work will also affect the score.

Overall Impression:  How well, overall, does this nominee seem to fit the criteria for the award?